An artificial marble, which is commonly known as an artificial marble composite providing a texture of a natural marble, obtained by combining natural marble chips or a mineral with an acryl, an unsaturated polyester, an epoxy resin, and the like, and adding various additives, pigments, and the like, thereto, may be largely classified into an acrylic-based artificial marble and a polyester-based artificial marble. The artificial marble has been increasingly demanded as a material of various plates and interior due to properties such as excellent appearance, weatherability, and soft touch.
The artificial marble may have various colored marble chips added thereto in order to express a texture of a native rock; however, in the case of the marble chip, since a rotating knife cutter and a pulverizer are used on a predetermined calendered sheet to manufacture the chip, having a pulverized cross section formed therein, such that softness obtained from a circular shape and a natural property obtained from various circular sizes are not provided.
In order to manufacture the artificial marble so as to be similar to the native rock, a plurality of marble chips having various patterns and designs have been developed; however, the manufactured marble chips are not sufficient in obtaining effects as the same as the native rock.
Korean Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 10-2008-0069780 (Jul. 29, 2008) discloses a method of pre-treatment of chips for artificial marble, the method including: putting a plurality of artificial marble chips into an artificial marble compound, and then performing mixing, stirring and defoaming processes; removing an excess artificial compound in a mixture obtained by the previous step from the artificial marble chips using a sieve and forming a plurality of agglomerated composites obtained by solidifying the artificial marble chips together; and hardening the composites of the artificial marble chips sieved by a sieve in the previous step, wherein chips having non-uniform size and shapes are manufactured by this method.
However, in the above-described method of the pre-treatment of the chips for artificial marble, a large amount of compound is lost in the second process, and when less the compound has a low viscosity, less compound remains on a surface of the chip, such that a strength of the chip mass is not high as expected and is difficult to be controlled.
In the manufacturing method of the artificial marble chip known so far, the chip is added to a resin syrup, followed by stirring and crushing; however, the chip manufactured by the above-described manufacturing method has a uniform patterned size and shape.
However, in order to satisfy the various needs of consumers, research into an amorphous artificial marble chip not having a uniform pattern formed therein and an artificial marble having novel pattern rather than the existing pattern has been continuously developed.